Overview of the Compiere Application Dictionary and its Components

Next we refer the Column tab, and create a new column in the table(see the field naming conventions below). The new column must be as a System Element defined and hence we need to create a System Element prior to using it as a Column in the Table:

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Once the System Element has been defined, we set up the Column as follows:

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Create a new Reference key as follows:

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Because this is a custom list, we choose a validation type of List Validation, and a value format of L, indicating that any letters are allowed. For a full list of these conventions, refer to the help documentation in the system by pressing F1.

We then define the Reference key’s list validation options as follows:

Field naming conventions: Compiere recommends that customer-specific table and database column names be prefixed by EXT_, XX_, or CUST_, or the four letter entity registered with Compiere, such as SAAC_. This would also apply to indexes and constraints. The reason for this is that these entities are ignored in the migration process.

Length of field: Because we know that for this particular field there is going to be only one character we define a length of 1.

Default logic: We assume U, based on our list being Unknown.

Mandatory UI: Indicates that this field will be mandatory in the window, but not at database level.

Updatable: Indicates that the field is editable.

Always Updatable: Indicates that the field is always updatable, regardless of document status.